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117483-open-letter-to-carbine-just-for-a-bit-of-honestyclarification
Content ---- ---- ---- Well it's more of a "Please tell us if you're planning to f2p or not" thread. I mean, do you want to stock up on CREDD if the game is planning on being f2p? | |} ---- ---- ---- He seems to have gotten my point which some may not be clear on. Theres a huge fear right now that if it WERE to go F2P they would be stuck holding a completely useless currency. Mine being as well I went through this with TRION and RIFT. They completely 100% lied to their entire user base, then offered a "buy one yours sub and get the expansion for free!" promotion with STORM LEGION and then 6 months later went F2P and kept everyones money and refused all refunds. Sorry but there is alot of people including myself that don't feel a F2P game deserves my money or support. I would rather not be paying to keep a ship afloat just so they can change business models and go "whaling". | |} ---- ---- ---- Very eye opening! Thankyou! | |} ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- | |} ---- ---- ---- I don't understand the "I'll quit if it goes F2P" mindset. If the game goes F2P, it'll probably be a hybrid model, where subbing gives you exactly the same experience you have now (or even better, with advantages for subscribers that F2P players don't get). CREDD would undoubtedly convert over to sub time or cash shop currency. SWTOR now has around half a million subscribers, which was originally stated to be their numbers needed to be "substantially profitable". They didn't have as many subscribers before they converted to the hybrid subscription/F2P model, so something is drawing subscribers into the game. While I don't particularly like SWTOR's F2P model, the fact that BioWare been able to add new content to the game (as opposed to just cash shop items - which, undeniably, they have also added) obviously they're doing something right with their model.. | |} ---- The community here isn't exactly a bright summer day at the beach, and we all have to subscribe to post. And SWTOR's content updates since they went F2P include 10 levels, housing and a space combat system. Hardly "lackluster". | |} ---- ---- ---- I'm admittedly biased when it comes to SWTOR, since that game is the biggest disappointment ( to me) in the last decade or so. That has nothing to do with the F2P model though. Rift has ( or had, last I saw it) about the best F2P model I've seen, but I've heard rumors that it's going P2W. Seems like most F2P games start out with the whole " Don't worry guys, we're only offering cosmetic/quality of life stuff in the cash shop!" to gating basic MMO functionality and better gear. | |} ---- Define "most". I mean, these are all F2P games, and I'm sure a lot of them are P2W, but the vast majority of them are 3rd-party Asian imports that most Western players haven't even heard of, let alone played. What popular subscription-based MMORPGs that have switched to a hybrid model have become P2W? | |} ---- Incorrect regarding SWtoR on both accounts. Don't know about Rift. | |} ---- ---- ---- As long as there is actually no incentive for a subbing player to drop more money on the game, I'm fine with F2P. If there's anything behind a wall that requires more money from me, I will be completely done with the game if F2P happens. | |} ---- How do you know this? | |} ---- This x 1000. No game will ever block off options to its future, as such the best you can get is a 'not in current plans' which we already have. | |} ---- Disagree about wanting to play multiple MMOs at the same time. You only get out of an MMO what you put into it, and I'd rather have a kickass character in one than a bunch of middling characters in multiple games. That being said, if WS goes F2P other than a 1-20 trial situation like WoW, I will quit MMOs altogether because WS spoiled me for all other MMOs. I just can't go back to dated tab targeting, slow paced mechanics anymore. The entire genre will be a lost cause at that point. | |} ---- No it isn't. Entity is packed. | |} ---- I think you will be lucky to get anything better than NCsoft's statement when they had the recent staff reduction about them being fully behind wildstar until after the 3Q results are posted in mid November. | |} ---- ---- ---- Housing that is about 1/100th as flexible as Wildstar's was at launch, and 10 times the money sink. 10 levels, 5 aren't out yet, and the other 5 can be played through in a day, and have no individual Class stories. A space combat system that is PvP only, and has killed any development or improvements to the original space combat system they had. Let's be real, the stuff added to SWTOR since it went F2P is adequate only if you stay out of the game for 12 months at a time and come back for two months to play everything you missed, then unsub again. | |} ---- And yet, for some reason, it's the largest and fastest-growing chapter in my guild, and has been since launch, with raids 3 times a week. YMMV of course, but switching to a hybrid sub/F2P mode hasn't killed the enthusiasm for the game for a great many people. | |} ---- Hey bro Lamaurian is the real deal... even one of the dev's even admitted he was right once. His opinion is worth 1000x more of anyone else's just like Lethality's. | |} ---- As the owner of AskAJedi.com, I can tell you with absolute certainty that enthusiasm is absolutely *nothing* like it was at launch :) Edit: I let Apple take too much control of my typing. | |} ---- I agree that the enthusiasm is not as much at launch. But then again I also would state that a better indication of enthusiasm for the game of SWTOR would be looking at number of people looking at Dulfy.net an actual popular website for the game. Interestingly Dulfy.net stopped following wildstar in August even though she was saying it would be the SWTOR killer. | |} ---- I never said that it was. Obviously, if enthusiasm hadn't waned, it wouldn't have gone F2P to begin with. My point is that switching to a hybrid sub/F2P model hasn't killed the enthusiasm for the game. It's doing much better now than it was before the payment model change. As far as my guild goes, though, the enthusiasm hasn't waned at all since launch - and I'm sure that they're not the only ones that feel that way. I actually agree with Lemurian more often than not. This is just one of the times I don't. :D | |} ---- SWTOR lost me when it went with the whole 'every class a pet class' approach to companions. Being reliant on an AI with the intellect of a turnip gets pretty old, fast. I haven't played since perhaps a few months after launch, but the whole experience left such a bad taste in my mouth, I never had any desire to go back. | |} ---- I know. It's almost enough to make one think that not every game has the same level of appeal to everyone. | |} ---- Someone clearly doesn't get the point of joke putting that quote in my sig is. | |} ---- From the getgo they said it's not likely and haven't wavered since on the business model, but if you really want them to reaffirm their stance then the only you you'll get it is by backing them into a corner and force an answer. By pretty much copy/pasting this post into a unsub reasons description box or submit a ticket saying why. As for credd, at 50 it's easy to afford, just buy it if you're worried about P2P vs F2P vs B2P then why do you care about platinum? | |} ---- Not wanting to drag around dead weight to quest isn't a matter of personal taste. The companion idea when I played was horribly implemented and frustrating to play around. Not to mention, a lot of classes' 'ideal' companion may not come until later on, meaning you're stuck with completely useless companions for a bulk of the leveling experience. Not exactly the best way to win fans. I digress, the point I was making before is that while SWTOR may be more financially successful now due to it's F2P model, that doesn't mean it's a 'good' game. Wildstar won't suddenly be better to those that it didn't appeal to before, simply because the sub is gone. moderator edit: content Edited November 4, 2014 by Chillia | |} ---- Yes. It is a matter of personal taste. For example, you found it "horribly implemented and frustrating to play around" and I didn't. There were a few times when I had to swap out companions and had to gear them up, but it really wasn't that big of a deal. Most of the time I enjoyed it, as it gave me the chance to experiment with different roles. I could level as a healer with a DPS or tank companion and a tank with a DPS or healer companion. Since SWTOR has half a million subscribers two years after going F2P, clearly there are people who disagree with you enough to continue to pay a monthly fee. And then there are the other half a million F2P players - which undoubtedly include people who subbed before and quit because they found either the time they spent, or the content (or both), not worth paying a monthly fee for. I don't know how many of them are paying or how much, or what they're buying, but at least a million people think it's a good enough game to play it every month. | |} ---- Except the swTOR userbase is a fan-crazy one that will swallow anything thrown at them as long as it has Star-Wars labeled on top of it. And the fact there is no alternative for Star Wars anymore except swTOR. It's not as if they actually have a choice. | |} ---- A bit like the Wildstar apologists we have on these forums. | |} ---- The only reason SWTOR has survived is it's legacy. If it were a fresh IP, it would've been dead in the water. I take it they still split your survivability and control with a borderline silly AI? Yeah, no thanks. Edited November 20, 2014 by BusterCasey | |} ---- Probably has something to do with success in raiding in SWTOR being equivalent to just showing up. | |} ---- I'm sure there's a lot of that around, but not me. I'm a crazy hardcore Star Wars nerd (and was even more so when SWTOR launched), but it was so completely un-Star Wars to me that I couldn't forgive the awful multiplayer content any longer and quit. It literally had none of the content I wanted to see in an Old Republic Era Star Wars game. All it did was rehash stuff that has been played out in every Star Wars game already, or made up garbage that didn't make any sense instead of making content inspired by things we already heard about but could never experience because of the timeline. | |} ---- SWTOR is going F2P - "it's a fail game in spite of being Star Wars" SWTOR is successful as a hybrid sub/F2P game - "it's still a fail game. It's only successful because it's Star Wars" How about SWG? People go on and on about it like it was the best thing since sliced bread and yet claim that NGE ruined the game (yet they continued to play it for another 6 years). I won't deny that the popularity of Star Wars is a big part of what's keeping/kept those games alive, but in the case of SWTOR, it probably wouldn't even be around today if it hadn't switched its business model. And if SWTOR couldn't keep enough subscribers in spite of being Star Wars, what makes you think a new IP like Wildstar can? Maybe Tera, Rift and Aion would be better examples. As of July, Tera, Rift and Aion are in the top 10. And most of the others on that list are also games that started with a sub and went F2P. Granted, this is counting revenue, not players, but without players, there's no revenue, and I very much doubt that all that money comes from a handful of whales with an unlimited bank account. | |} ---- What?? How dare you, Sir? How dare you bring numbers into this? Don't you know that the arguments on MMO forums are all based on hyperbole, feelings, feelings about hyperbole, hyperbole about hyperbole, feelings about feelings, hyperbole about feelings, and hyperbole based on feelings? How dare you... | |} ---- No they did not. The majority of people left SWG when CU and NGE hit the game. There were major threads on the forum about it and people followed up. Youtube was filled with goodbye movies and guilds screening their disband/break up. Those 2 updates ruined the game. It's also when the projects like SWGemu started up to revert the game back to it's original state. | |} ---- Tera, Rift and Aion....all MMOs that aren't terribly popular in the west. Revenue isn't an indicator of a game's community health, just that the game makes money. SWTOR couldn't keep subs because *it was a bad game*, despite your opinion on it. It wasn't called TORtanic for no reason. | |} ---- Well, they're not the same people then. But there were plenty of people on the SWTOR forums who had previously played SWG until the servers closed, but were also extolling the virtues of the pre-CU/NGE days. Both Tera and Aion are Korean games, but Rift is a Western game. If you want to remove all the Korean games from that list, you'd find that there are more Western games on there that are F2P or made a transition to a hybrid model from a sub model. It was called TORtanic by 4chan long before it launched because 4chan. It's a catchy name and it stuck because people like to mock things, especially by publishers they don't like, and since going F2P is saddled with the stigma of being the place where bad games go to die, it was used to brand SWTOR as "the epitome of a failed game" - which, as it turns out, isn't the case. Plenty of games have gone F2P before and since; EQ2, DCUO, STO, LOTRO, TSW, ArcheAge, Rift, Aion, the list goes on. All of them still have their audiences. Many of them are still getting content. All of them went F2P when subscriptions dipped, but none of them are "bad gamestm". None of them have gotten the drubbing that SWTOR has. SWTOR is just the "oh how the mighty have fallen" that people like to point and laugh at. In the same way that there are people in these forums and on reddit who are mocking Wildstar's troubles because of "#HARDCORE!" | |} ---- And honestly, Carbine is doing way better at this. They listen and they talk with us. It's not perfect, it can be improved a lot. But they're not SOE or EA. | |} ---- It stuck because it applied. If Bioware had spent more time on game building, and less time on voice-overs for fetch/kill quests and reinventing the wheel, SWTOR would have been a success on the magnitude of WoW. Instead, it's somewhat profitable. That is why it's called TORtanic, and why it's panned as a failure. Bioware practically had a license to print money, and they botched it terribly. You can keep trying, but you'll never convince me that paying for basic services a la carte is somehow better than a flat monthly fee for a full featured game. | |} ---- Now, correct me if I'm wrong, I never really dug into SWTOR so I only know what I've heard from others regarding its business model, but: Doesn't SWTOR along with every other F2P game I've seen offer the option to Subscribe to the game for $15 a month, and in return you gain unmitigated access to all of the game's content? Wouldn't this essentially make playing the F2P game as a Subscriber the same experience as being a Subscriber to any P2P game? It seems to me that now the only major difference is that you are now sharing the game world with people who do not have access to all of the game's content, meanwhile you do, as opposed to a P2P game where either you are a Subscriber or you're not playing at all. Well, that and there's a button in some corner labelled "cash-shop", but then again, there are P2P games *cough WoW cough* that do the same thing... | |} ---- That is not necessarily the case for all those games. | |} ---- What are the differences? I played TSW for a while and they used a paid DLC/cosmetic cash shop system (B2P, but w/e) where if you were a Subscriber you would be given Subscriber Points (don't know what they were actually called) each month and you could use those to purchase the one-time, account bound, DLC or you could pay cash for them (similar to the companies charge for expansion packs, but smaller) if you wanted to use your points on other things. The other games seem even less obtrusive if you are a Subscriber. For example, I understand that the cosmetic items purchased from SWTOR's cash-shop can be placed on the Auction House and can be purchased that way for in-game cash by anyone, including Subscribers - so they can get the items in the cash shop for in game cash by purchasing it from other players (sounds remarkably similar CREDD now that I think about it). | |} ---- It's not the same as CREDD because subscribers aren't paying any extra to buy the items using their stipend of starbux before selling it on the AH. CREDD costs extra in addition to a sub. | |} ---- Oh, heh, that sounds even better than CREDD actually. It sounds to me like it offers 2 different options, either you can purchase things from the cash-shop with RL money and sell them to other players for in-game money, or as a Subscriber you can use your Subscriber Points starbux to purchase items off the cash-shop and sell them to other players for in-game cash. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal. Offers quite a bit of flexibility for both F2P and P2P players (but more so for the Subscribers). | |} ---- The problem is that F2P players have their maximum credits capped, and I can't imagine all of the stuff is priced under that credit cap, which results in the F2P people being forced to buy stuff for real money, in order to them be able to buy stuff for in game money. It's a psychological trap. I want that! I can get it on the AH! Oh shit I can't carry that much money (pay real money to carry more money). Repeat. | |} ---- Thanks for the info, Olivar. I never actually played SWG, so I didn't know how much of a hit it took after those upgrades. It was just ironic seeing people on the SWTOR forums who had just left SWG after it was shut down, criticizing SWTOR for not being like SWG was pre-NGE, when they had continued to play SWG for 6 years after NGE. We'll have to agree to disagree then. I'm not trying to convince you. All of the games that went F2P went F2P because they had to not because F2P is better. I agree with you that a flat monthly fee is better if you're going to be spending the time in the game to warrant it. Many casual players don't though, and F2P is a better option for them. Most of the games DO still offer a sub, though. I subbed when I played SWTOR, Rift and LOTRO as my main games, even though they had a F2P option, but I still pop in every once in a while. If Wildstar offered a F2P option, I'd still sub. | |} ---- I can assure you that the plight of those who willingly choose to play a limited access version of an MMORPG, in exchange for not having to pay a dime to the company that produced it, elicits nothing less than a solitary glistening tear on my cheek on a daily basis; but I am actually more interested in the experiences of those who choose to pay a Monthly Subscription Fee while playing a "Free to Play" game: Are the Subscribers also credit capped? Are the Subscribers subjected to any other restrictions? How is paying a Subscription Fee in a F2P game any different from paying a Subscription Fee in a P2P game? | |} ---- Because in a F2P game, the people who literally aren't playing as a result of someone putting actual additional money into the system are a drain on resources. Parasites. | |} ---- Edit: I think I figured out what you're getting at here. The people that are "playing without paying" are costing the company additional resources without providing any money in return for the services that they are receiving, making them "Parasites". <- is that what you were saying? How much does it cost the company maintaining the MMO, per player? I always assumed that the costs to the company were directly associated with: The building (mortgage), the employee paychecks, the fringe benefits, the cost of utilities, the cost of the hardware, the cost of the software, the cost of the maintenance staff, the cost of the accounting staff, the cost of various insurances, etc. I wasn't aware that each and every player playing an MMO contributed as a direct cost to the company (unless you're suggesting that the company goes out and buys new servers every time one seems like it fills up regardless of their revenue...). How did you find out that we are all contributing to Carbine's costs as paying subscribers? | |} ---- ---- Interesting. And the company is charged based on individual users? I always imagined something like that would be based on a flat-rate charge, or several different flat-rate plans, in a fashion similar to how my internet provider charges me for the various internet speeds. With the way it works for my internet usage, it doesn't matter how much or how little of it I use, I pay the same rate according to my contract/plan each month. Are you sure that this is not the case for the bandwidth and server hosting charges? | |} ---- I'm sure it's tiered somehow based on usage. | |} ---- ---- Not to mention most of the "players" Sony claimed were playing SWG in later years were Station Pass holders who had access to a whole raft of dead or dying games that Sony kept around because they had the licenses and hardware as sunk costs, and the more it looked like they gave you for the pass, the more people they could sucker into paying for it. SWG did pull some numbers in the latter half of its run, but for the most part they were players who never knew about the original game or the changes. It was an entirely different type of player. They had a game built for people who wanted to live in a Star Wars world, and they killed it to make a game that was as much like other MMOs as they could make it. | |} ---- ---- Operational cost per user is pennies if that. Kinda like soda from McDonalds, virtually pure profit. | |} ---- It sounds to me like the operational costs per user associated with bandwidth and server hosting are so negligible that it is impossible to use that as a justification for referring to complete strangers as "Parasites"; especially given that companies (I would imagine) are acutely aware of the fact that if they invite people to play a limited access version of their game without charging those players any money, it is reasonable to expect that a percentage of those players will never actually spend a dime, and the company therefore would have a plan in place to accommodate for that tendency... now that we've gotten that out of the way, back to my original questions: I've never subscribed to a F2P game before. What should I expect if I were to subscribe to one? Have other games had unnecessary restrictions on the access of those individuals who choose to pay a Subscription Fee while playing a Free to Play game? Is there a difference between paying a Sub-Fee for a F2P game versus paying a Sub-Fee for a P2P game? | |} ----